A Toilet Revolution in the making

UNITED NATIONS (IPS) - When it comes to discussing the critical health problem of inadequate sanitation, few politicians want to take the lead, despite the mountains of scientific evidence that poor hygiene and lack of proper toilet facilities are the cause of many deadly but preventable diseases.

Still, Clarissa Brocklehurst, chief of UNICEF's Water and Environmental Sanitation division, is optimistic that the upcoming "International Year of Sanitation" in 2008 will put this issue much higher on the policy-making agenda.

IPS correspondent Nergui Manalsuren spoke with Brocklehurst at UNICEF headquarters in New York. Excerpts of the interview follow.

IPS: There are an estimated 2.6 billion people living without adequate sanitation, of whom 980 million are children. How is UNICEF working to resolve this problem?

CB: Whereas water supply is often a community decision, and a community responsibility, we find that sanitation is a household decision. Many families actually want to have a toilet for the privacy, convenience and the dignity that it offers. And we value that too, particularly because we work a lot with women as mothers of children. For those women, the health impact of the toilet is less important than the impact it has on their dignity and comfort, not having to go and defecate out in a public place.

We are finding that once families are convinced of the need for sanitation, they are willing to go to great lengths in order to provide their family with sanitation, which means building a toilet. And that means making sure that sanitarian equipment is available on the local market, and that we have lots of different designs of toilets so that people can chose the one that they think is the most appropriate to them.

IPS: Why is sanitation considered one of the most neglected of all the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)?

CB: It is pretty easy to see why sanitation is neglected; it's something that people are embarrassed to talk about. It's what one author called "the last taboo". It's embarrassing, it's seen as a very personal, private issue. It's not the one that is seen as particularly sexy or interesting. It doesn't lead to a nice photograph.

One of the things we've been trying really hard to do is to get positive photographs of latrines, the same way that UNICEF has lots of wonderful positive photographs of water supply. And you can imagine how difficult that is, right? So in a way we compare ourselves in the sanitation sector to the people who pioneered HIV/AIDS. When the issue of AIDS first came up, advocates had to break through the fact that in order to talk about HIV and AIDS, you had to be willing to talk about people's sexual practices, and this was very difficult, but they did it. And it became very matter of fact, and people realised that it is something that needed to be discussed if the disease would be combated.

If the health MDGs are going to be met, we have to improve water supply, improve sanitation, and improve people's hygiene practices, particularly washing their hands with soap. And that means that we have to talk about people's defecation practices the same way that we had to talk about people's sexual practices. And this is a difficult thing to do, because people get embarrassed and shy, and start to giggle. So it's something that we have to address head-on.

Read more for full interview

Source: IPS

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